Picture of Dom Elias a.k.a. Dominik Elias Schlienger playing guitar
 
 

overlapping circles

This is the music for a light installation by "Flowers of Life" in a public park in Kerava, Finland, in October 2014

 

 
 
 

freezing

This is the stereo mixdown of a surround installation, where the timeline of the composition was controlled by a thermometer. The range of the thermometer was set so, that at room temperature the soundscape was "icy" (as in the very end of the mixdown here), but by touching the termometer, the ice started to melt, and watery sounds became audible, as can be heard in the middle of the mixdown. At (body) temperature, 36°C, the sounds of waterfalls and rivers are nearly equivalent to white noise as can be heard in the beginning here.

The sound material consists entirely of field recordings. The ice-soundsare from the Saima region in Eastern Finland (recorded at temperatures between -10 and -23°C); The water sounds from the Bristol UK area (River Avon) and valley creeks in South Wales, UK, near Cardiff.

 

 
 
 

step by step: non-acousmatically concrète

The Step by Step (2010) trilogy uses video field recordings of steps (Liisa Tuomi) when walking on a tidal beach (Weston-Super-Mare, UK), running in a park (Greenbank Cemetry, Bristol, UK) and the sound a trolley makes when pulled over concrete tiles (Temple Meads area, Bristol), as the compositional/rhythmical raw material for 3 pieces of music.

Music & all instruments (violas, violins, trombone, upright bass, Hohner Pianet T) by Dom Elias, steps by Liisa Tuomi

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

3.141

3.141 is a composition/installation/performance for 16 channel hemispheric dome, recorded viola (fixed media), cor anglais and violoncello in 3 parts.

Part I "e pur si muove" is for recorded viola (fixed media) for the recording I played single motes of all pitches used in the series, (two "chords" of 16 pitches each) and looped them. A Matlab script spatialises the pitches so, that they rise and set over the 16 loudspeakers of the Uniarts Helsinki SibA MuTe "Dome".

In Part II, “irrational transcendental”, an english horn and a cello improvise over the fixed media. Their material is based on one chord cluster each.

In Part III, “eπlogue”, the two acoustic instruments play diffused via wireless loudspeakers handed to the audience to pass around.

3.141 Part I "e pur si muove", dom elias: viola (fixed media) 2017

3.141 Part III eπlogue: Saku Mattila, (english horn) and Saara Viika (violoncello) 2021.

3.141 was premiered at the Sibafest 2018 in Musiikkitalo Helsinki. From the program notes: "3.141 is a composition/installation/performance for 16 channel hemispheric dome, recorded viola (fixed media), cor anglais and violoncello. The musical material consists of a series of intervals losely based on the number Pi. The fixed media creates a spherical universe in which the two improvising performers (on cor anglais and cello) have to find their place in the sound world revolving around them. However much the univers's regular harmonic movements churning their foreseable paths across the firmament inscribe themselves on us, loving and fighting in the midst of it, we lose sight of how the simplicity of the circle too, contains in it an irrational transcendantal (the number Pi) the last decimal point of which will always elude us. Here, in this performance we try to pause and find an inner peace we could share, while the world churns on - and a computational machine somewhere finds the next decimal point of Pi, as we meditate on the circle. Maybe peace is an irrational transcendental? The piece ends in a (scored) ePilogue for cor anglais and cello, an individual account of what it might feel like to find a place of peace, a pause..."